Knowing Madonna's problems with leaks and steams getting lost, I am sure those are the movie scripts and her agenda with all her plans for the next two years. They are being ready for auction as we speak.

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Knowing Madonna's problems with leaks and steams getting lost, I am sure those are the movie scripts and her agenda with all her plans for the next two years. They are being ready for auction as we speak.

If you climbed into a time machine, went back to the ’80s and asked random people to guess why Madonna might be making news in 2017, the top responses would include: “She offended a religious leader,” “she invented a new geometric brassiere,” “she married a foul-mouthed extraterrestrial” or “she founded an orgy cult.”

Sex and scandal, these were once the bookends of Madonna’s public persona. She aimed to please by offending. Cultural taboos and sacred iconography were her playthings as she slinked around in lingerie, literally crawling suggestively through the early years of MTV and a music revolution she helped lead in which marketing learned to drop-kick artistry.

For much of her career as a singer, actress and, more recently, an entrepreneur, Madonna has existed as an image, which is to say, not as a real person.

This has now changed.

With very little fanfare, Madonna recently moved to Portugal. For a global superstar with roots in New York and London, this is the equivalent of stockbroker moving to the exurbs to start over as a horticulturist.

As she recently wrote on Instagram: “The energy of Portugal is so inspiring. I feel very creative and alive here. . . This will be the next Chapter in My Book! It’s time to conquer the world from a different vantage point!!”

This different vantage point has already snapped new filters atop her image.

On Friday, when the new issue of People hits newsstands, the cover will feature Madonna and four of her adopted children with the headline, “Life With My Kids.”

The feature, for which Madonna gave an advance shout-out on Wednesday, includes reflections on more than a decade of fighting poverty in Africa through her charity, Raising Malawi.

“Helping people is like tattoos,” Madonna tells the magazine. “Once you get a tattoo, you keep getting them. It’s addicting. You see the difference you’re making in one person’s life, so what’s the big deal if I help one more person and one more person?”

At a time when the world keeps getting more and more depressing — catastrophic hurricanes, the threat of nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula, Donald Trump’s endless array of moral atrocities — Madonna’s goofy analogy is somehow uplifting, as is her compulsive philanthropy.

A year away from 60, Madonna could inhabit a private island and revel in her riches and this would be her prerogative. She’s earned the right to shrug. Instead, she’s trying to improve the lives of others inside one the gloomiest corners of the world.

Unlike so many in Hollywood, where lip service is a currency, Madonna is putting her time and money into a cause instead of making her cause time and money. And by sublimating her energy this way, Madonna has triggered a personal reinvention that nobody in the ’80s could have possibly predicted: she is becoming downright relatable and, dare I say it, endearing.

Her Instagram posts this summer — kids riding bikes, dancing, eating, wearing paper crowns, laughing, kicking a ball — are about as far removed from sex and scandal as can be imagined. These new domestic images from her life, circa 2017, have superseded her old image and turned her into a real person.

The Material Girl has morphed into a Soccer Mom and the universal anxieties of raising children are immune to her celebrity status.

Madonna is so much like the rest of us right now that she’s even squabbling with couriers over delivery mix-ups. This week, she posted a picture of herself on Twitter, in which she looks less like a global pop star and more like a put-upon consumer who is getting the runaround from customer service.

She explained her dour expression this way: “When you’ve been arguing with fed-ex all week that you really are Madonna and they still won’t release your package.”

This is the opposite of identity theft. It’s identity disbelief. What’s next for Madonna on this road to normal-people problems? Will she spend her evenings doing laundry and helping with ridiculously hard Grade 6 homework? Will she invite her new neighbours over for coffee to lament a troubling bylaw? Will she soon be refused a seniors discount at the drugstore because the clerk simply refuses to believe the bespectacled blond with no makeup and a cart full of ointment and meds for joint pain is really Madonna?

From her new beginning in Portugal to her upcoming cover story in People to her existential crisis with FedEx, Madonna has undone the image she carefully crafted all those years ago.

She’s now someone else — still rich and famous, but someone more like us.

And if you were to pilot that time machine decades into the future, you will find that 2017 Madonna — generous, caring and yearning for new triumphs in the confusing embrace of middle age and motherhood — is the Madonna that is most fondly remembered.

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I like the article and agree. Madonna may have been many things, but endearing and eager to sing along with her kids in videos is not one of them.

And it's true that her image is now far different from 5 years ago, for example. Either because she decided that or simply because Instagram became trendy and we are all using it and sharing what 5 years ago thought was too private.

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Her fedex tweet has 75,000 likes, way higher than any tweet from people like Gaga or Katy with almost 70m or 100m followers.

What's amazing is that Madonna doesn't even use Twitter! She has only used Twitter for special occasions once in a blue moon years ago and hasn't used it since. Her Twitter now is just her assistant reposting her posts from Instagram.

If you climbed into a time machine, went back to the ’80s and asked random people to guess why Madonna might be making news in 2017, the top responses would include: “She offended a religious leader,” “she invented a new geometric brassiere,” “she married a foul-mouthed extraterrestrial” or “she founded an orgy cult.”

Sex and scandal, these were once the bookends of Madonna’s public persona. She aimed to please by offending. Cultural taboos and sacred iconography were her playthings as she slinked around in lingerie, literally crawling suggestively through the early years of MTV and a music revolution she helped lead in which marketing learned to drop-kick artistry.

For much of her career as a singer, actress and, more recently, an entrepreneur, Madonna has existed as an image, which is to say, not as a real person.

This has now changed.

With very little fanfare, Madonna recently moved to Portugal. For a global superstar with roots in New York and London, this is the equivalent of stockbroker moving to the exurbs to start over as a horticulturist.

As she recently wrote on Instagram: “The energy of Portugal is so inspiring. I feel very creative and alive here. . . This will be the next Chapter in My Book! It’s time to conquer the world from a different vantage point!!”

This different vantage point has already snapped new filters atop her image.

On Friday, when the new issue of People hits newsstands, the cover will feature Madonna and four of her adopted children with the headline, “Life With My Kids.”

The feature, for which Madonna gave an advance shout-out on Wednesday, includes reflections on more than a decade of fighting poverty in Africa through her charity, Raising Malawi.

“Helping people is like tattoos,” Madonna tells the magazine. “Once you get a tattoo, you keep getting them. It’s addicting. You see the difference you’re making in one person’s life, so what’s the big deal if I help one more person and one more person?”

At a time when the world keeps getting more and more depressing — catastrophic hurricanes, the threat of nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula, Donald Trump’s endless array of moral atrocities — Madonna’s goofy analogy is somehow uplifting, as is her compulsive philanthropy.

A year away from 60, Madonna could inhabit a private island and revel in her riches and this would be her prerogative. She’s earned the right to shrug. Instead, she’s trying to improve the lives of others inside one the gloomiest corners of the world.

Unlike so many in Hollywood, where lip service is a currency, Madonna is putting her time and money into a cause instead of making her cause time and money. And by sublimating her energy this way, Madonna has triggered a personal reinvention that nobody in the ’80s could have possibly predicted: she is becoming downright relatable and, dare I say it, endearing.

Her Instagram posts this summer — kids riding bikes, dancing, eating, wearing paper crowns, laughing, kicking a ball — are about as far removed from sex and scandal as can be imagined. These new domestic images from her life, circa 2017, have superseded her old image and turned her into a real person.

The Material Girl has morphed into a Soccer Mom and the universal anxieties of raising children are immune to her celebrity status.

Madonna is so much like the rest of us right now that she’s even squabbling with couriers over delivery mix-ups. This week, she posted a picture of herself on Twitter, in which she looks less like a global pop star and more like a put-upon consumer who is getting the runaround from customer service.

She explained her dour expression this way: “When you’ve been arguing with fed-ex all week that you really are Madonna and they still won’t release your package.”

This is the opposite of identity theft. It’s identity disbelief. What’s next for Madonna on this road to normal-people problems? Will she spend her evenings doing laundry and helping with ridiculously hard Grade 6 homework? Will she invite her new neighbours over for coffee to lament a troubling bylaw? Will she soon be refused a seniors discount at the drugstore because the clerk simply refuses to believe the bespectacled blond with no makeup and a cart full of ointment and meds for joint pain is really Madonna?

From her new beginning in Portugal to her upcoming cover story in People to her existential crisis with FedEx, Madonna has undone the image she carefully crafted all those years ago.

She’s now someone else — still rich and famous, but someone more like us.

And if you were to pilot that time machine decades into the future, you will find that 2017 Madonna — generous, caring and yearning for new triumphs in the confusing embrace of middle age and motherhood — is the Madonna that is most fondly remembered.